History of the week

(Ben)

Ben's books. Total cost (so far): $323.51

Monday: Wake up to find that Lehman Brothers has filed for bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch has been bought by Bank of America. Having researched banks for the past two years at the Fed, these events are easily the biggest since the S&L crisis of the 1980's, and probably the biggest since the Great Depression. Add that to the fact that we already lost Bear Stearns, Countrywide, several other regional banks, and a few biggies are still in trouble, and it's no stretch at all to think of the past twelve months as the equivalent of a financial 9/11. Not only that, but Monday is also the...

First day of school! Math camp is over and now it's time for the real classes to begin. I attend Probability and Statistics in the morning and Contract Theory in the afternoon. So far, so good.

Tuesday: Attend my first lectures in the core classes that make the first year of an Econ Ph.D. what it is: Microeconomic Theory and Macroeconomic Theory. I had heard horror stories about the micro teacher, but I really like him just fine. True, he takes second order derivatives faster than most people can read this sentence, but besides that I can't complain. Macro is great, as expected.

Wednesday: More earth-shattering financial news! AIG is bailed out by the Fed, while in return the Fed receives a huge percentage of ownership in the company. This is completely unprecedented in the history of central banking, which means that no one really has a clue what the outcome will be. Still, in my opinion, it had to be done. I don't believe the Fed should save many banks (or insurance companies, in this case) from failing. But a company like AIG is just too intricately wound with the full system to allow them to just go out like a light. Instead, their problems need to be slowly unwound over time, or else the whole system would end up in a huge knot. If all goes well (and there's no guarantee of that), the American public will actually make money on the deal, and a major crisis will have been averted in the process. Let's hope that's the case.

Besides the big news, I decide not to take Contract Theory and instead I attend Psychology and Economics, which I thoroughly enjoy. Ask me about it sometime if you're interested. I'm definitely taking this course.

Thursday: It's back to the basics with Macro and Micro once again. Not only that, but I make a huge discovery: Ellis' whorl on the back of his head swirls counterclockwise!!! Only 8.4% of the general public have counterclockwise whorls, and this study links the whorl direction to left-handedness. According to the author, Ellis has about a 50/50 chance of being left-handed, while if he had a clockwise whorl his chances would be less than 1/10. Needless to say, I'm thrilled with the news, since I'm one of the lucky 10% who get to be left-handed. Jenn's mom is in the top 10% as well, and she's pretty excited too.

Friday: After spending the whole day struggling through problem sets (no class today) and putting the finishing touches on a paper I've been working on, Jenn and I celebrate by going to Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse while Jenn's mom watches the kids! (Kids! We're still getting used to the plurality there) Not only was the food good and the company beyond compare, but the restaurant also had a talking buffalo that told jokes occasionally. You can't beat that.

We're all gearing up for Grandma Lori to leave us tomorrow; it's going to be tough, especially for Henry, who will lose his full-time playmate and spoiler-in-chief when she goes home. Looks like next week might be another one for the books.

P.S. Here's a bonus picture of Ellis. He spent most of the week snoozing!